3.3.3 DK Tanking (Threat and Death Grip)

[Loranus]

Long Overdue discussion on this topic for people finally posting it here.

Tank Spec you should be in: Blood for Progression, Frost for Heroics.

Changes: Threat has been incredibly boosted for Icy Touch in frost presence making it an ideal move to put into your rotation more often when you need the threat. (The threat self buffed on a level 81 elite is about 18k threat in blood and about 25k in frost. raid buffed its approximately 30-40k threat in blood depending on crit and debuffs.)

MY Opening Rotation on Single Target: IT,IT,PS,PS,HS,HS
Sustained Rotation: DS,DS,HS,HS (IT and PS to keep Diseases up when nescessary)
Spamming: Rune Strike
My opening Rotation gives me when raid buffed approximately 120k-160k threat dependent on how many times Rune Strike goes off.

Careful of this as you can Rip Threat off other tanks easily with an Icy Touch Crit cause unlike other tanks its counted as Spell Damage so is boosted by any caster abilities that would increase spell damage and can pull up to 50-60k threat in a single strike (This effectively looks like a Taunt on threat meters because you suddenly accelerate up the meter and surpass another tank if your keeping close to him.)

if you hit 80 or so runic power dump in a Death Coil to get some extra threat and damage but try and keep enough up for Rune Strike as it pulls a lot more threat and damage for you.

Something I have read about a lot is saving the rune to use your tanking cooldown (Blood for Vampiric Blood, Frost for Unbreakable Armor) Macro the Cooldown to your Blood Tap ability. You will get the Death Rune it automatically refreshes than activates your cooldown and with the tier bonus you will gain an additional 12% damage reduction on it.

Death Grip: The tool of Grief where everyone uses it wrong including myself. Death Grip has about 5 good uses to it and we will list them.

1. Moving an enemy to your position
2. Taunt
3. Interrupts Spellcasting (If you can move them)
4. Interrupts Non-interruptable spellcasting if you can move the monster.
5. Makes the creature focus on you for 3 seconds no matter threat.

Number 1 is the exclusive ability of a DK we can make Enemies come to us quickly and easily instead of going to them with a charge or stun.
This is a great use for it especially on spell casters and fights like Death Whisperer where you have to manage 3 adds you can bring them all together right on top of a Death and Decay.

Number 2 we have only 2 taunts in the game and no AOE one. Dark Command is on an 8 Second Cooldown and Death Grip untalented is on a 35 second cooldown. This is the main issue we see in groups is that a DK uses Death Grip as a taunt if he loses threat which may drag a monster to them and away from DPS or Other Tanks especially when the mob you focus on dies and you tab cycle to a new target.

Number 3 and 4 can be used to interrupt spellcasting by moving the Monsters location. This leads back to number 2 issue of when everything else is not available (Mind Freeze requires Melee Range and Strangulate needs a rune) a Tank will use DG to interrupt spellcasting and cause issues.

Number 5 while innate if a DK DPS uses it he needs to be focused on for 3 seconds by healers or something to keep him alive. As a Tank it will let you build up threat on the Enemy but if used on another tanks target he may not be able to grab the monster back immediately.

Death Grip has uses very difficult to use them effectively try and lay off it and not keep it right next to your normal buttons.

[Rildasomia]

Thanks Lor, this will help me with Ewoen!